Trump’s Fed Pick Flails Under Liz Warren’s Brutal Line of Questioning

At his confirmation hearing, Stephen Miran, a Trump adviser nominated by the president to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board, refused to question any of Donald Trump’s main talking points when questioned by Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Warren began with an “easy yes or no”: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?

Failing to activate his microphone, Miran began to answer circuitously (“Thank you Senator Warren. Let me begin by saying, although we didn’t have the chance to sit down—”) but was asked to turn on his mic as Warren repeated the question, saying, “It’s a yes or no.”

Miran took a swig of water, then prevaricated: “Joe Biden was certified by Congress as the president of the United States.” Pressed again, he again evaded, simply saying Biden “was certified by the Congress.”

“Can you say the words Donald Trump lost that election?” Warren asked. “Are you independent enough to say that?”

“The Congress certified Joe Biden,” Miran repeated, leading Warren to change the subject to Trump’s firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ commissioner last month after a poor July job report.

Asked whether he agrees with Trump’s baseless claim that the BLS faked job numbers to rig the 2024 election for Kamala Harris, Miran began to answer another question entirely: “Look, the data quality from the Bureau of Labor—”

“That’s not the question, about the data quality,” Warren cut in, repeating her question. Miran replied that BLS data quality has deteriorated, to which Warren observed that Miran was mum on the issue until “the numbers started showing that Trump’s economy was headed in the wrong direction.”

Warren repeated the question for the third time, and Miran replied that the BLS failed to “take corrective action” to improve data. Asked pointedly whether the agency had “faked” numbers, Miran accused it of complacency. Asked whether he had any evidence of fake numbers, Miran again just harped on declining data quality.

“In other words, just two straightforward questions about your independence, and you’ve blown both of them,” Warren said, later adding, “Dr. Miran, you have made clear that you will do or say whatever Donald Trump wants you to do or say, and that may work in a political position, but it takes an ax to Fed independence and will make life far more expensive for American families.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that Susan Monarez, the ousted head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was lying about being threatened into rubber-stamping policies she didn’t agree with.

Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee Thursday, Kennedy was asked by Senator Rob Wyden to respond to allegations that he had told Monarez to “just go along with vaccine recommendations,” even though “she didn’t think such recommendations aligned with scientific evidence.”

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Thursday, Monarez claimed that Kennedy had directed her to preapprove recommendations made by a “vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric.” She wrote that she’d refused, and in a meeting on August 25, Kennedy had pressured her to resign or “face termination.” Days later, she was removed. 

Kennedy, who has lied before Congress multiple times, claimed that this time, Monarez was lying. 

“No, I did not say that to her,” Kennedy said. “And I never had a private meeting with her. There are witnesses to every meeting that we have, and all of those witnesses will say that I never said that.” 

“So she’s lying today to the American people, The Wall Street Journal?” Wyden pressed. 

“Yes, sir,” Kennedy replied. 

But Monarez’s allegations don’t exactly sound outlandish. Kennedy has spent much of his career peddling dangerous misinformation about vaccines. On Wednesday, more than 1,000 current and former HHS employees wrote a letter demanding that he step down, citing his appointment of “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts,” his refusal to be briefed by CDC experts, and his rescinding of the FDA’s emergency use authorization for the Covid vaccine. 

In her op-ed, Monarez claimed that she had attempted to defend scientific review in the face of Kennedy’s overhaul of the nation’s vaccine policy.

“Those seeking to undermine vaccines use a familiar playbook: discredit research, weaken advisory committees, and use manipulated outcomes to unravel protections that generations of families have relied on to keep deadly diseases at bay,” Monarez wrote.  

“Once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined. That isn’t reform,” she added. “It’s sabotage.”  

President Trump’s Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in an attempt to pressure her into dropping her lawsuit against the administration, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The department has already issued grand jury subpoenas in Georgia and Michigan, according to officials familiar with the matter.

Last month, Trump fired Cook, claiming she committed mortgage fraud by listing two of her homes as primary residences. In reality, it’s most likely that Trump was upset at her for maintaining the Fed’s independence and refusing to raise interest rates to the level Trump requested.

Cook in turn sued Trump for trying to fire her, and a judge is considering her emergency request to stop her dismissal while her lawsuit continues. The Fed’s next meeting is September 16. Her lawsuit noted that the allegations against her are “pretextual, in order to effectuate her prompt removal and vacate a seat for President Trump to fill and forward his agenda to undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve.”

“President Trump has no authority to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook,” her lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement. “His attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis. We will be filing a lawsuit challenging this illegal action.”

The DOJ’s criminal probe is a clear intimidation campaign that reflects Trump’s greater takeover of federal agencies, turning them from politically neutral entities that transcend politics to faceless organizations that do his bidding and his bidding only. Cook and some of her colleagues—like CDC Director Susan Monarez—haven’t caved yet. We’ll see if the criminal investigation changes that.

As President Donald Trump escalates his threats to take over Chicago, Senator Ted Cruz, ever the president’s loyal attack dog, has joined in.

The senator spoke on Newsmax Wednesday, calling Chicago Governor JB Pritzker a “disgusting, racist bigot” in response to comments Pritzker made about ICE targeting Latino Chicagoans.

Not content to merely smear the governor’s policies, Cruz turned his ire to Pritzker’s body.

“I don’t wanna get between JB Pritzker and the Domino’s pizza line, but I’ll tell you what I am willing to get between, it is him and his open doors for every human trafficker …”

Pritzker then fired back on X: “And I would never want to get between Ted and a trip to Cancun when there’s an emergency in Texas,” referencing the infamous Cancún vacation that Cruz took while his state was battered by a winter storm that killed hundreds.

Unfortunately for Cruz, the internet took Pritzker’s side and piled more insults onto the Texas senator.

Pritzker has loudly opposed Trump’s authoritarian proposals, especially as the president has continued to drag Chicago’s crime rates through the mud—despite a “historic drop in homicides” in the city that mirrors nationwide trends.

Thomas Massie, a libertarian Republican representative from Kentucky, says he is facing an “immense pressure campaign” for spearheading a bipartisan bill for transparency on the notorious late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

Massie has garnered 11 other Republican co-sponsors on his and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna’s bill to force the DOJ to release the so-called Epstein files in full. They have garnered just three Republicans, plus Massie, on a discharge petition to force the bill to a vote—which President Donald Trump deemed a “hostile act.”

Meanwhile, Massie has vowed to use immunity afforded to members of Congress under the speech and debate clause to publicly read a list of Epstein’s clients being privately compiled by his victims.

Appearing on CNN Wednesday evening, the Kentucky Republican described the pressure he and the handful of other GOP lawmakers are facing by taking Trump to task on Epstein.

“There’s an immense pressure campaign from the White House on Republican members right now,” he said. In his own district, he explained, “there’s been $2.5 million of ads run against me by three billionaires who are mega-donors to the Republican Party. And one of them is actually, I’m not going to say on Epstein’s list, but he’s in Epstein’s black book.”

Massie believes the powers that be are hoping to make an example of him to dissuade any other potential Republican dissenters on Epstein.

“I think what’s being run against me is a threat to other Republicans to try to keep them from doing what I’m doing,” he said.

But he remains unfazed—citing his resounding win in his 2020 Republican primary despite Trump then calling to “throw Massie out of Republican Party!” during one of their many spats. “So in some sense, I have the Trump antibodies,” Massie said. “But I’m definitely going to get a booster shot here.”

In a conversation with a White House official, Massie said, he confessed it was a mistake to announce there were 12 Republican co-sponsors on the bill to force DOJ disclosure of the files before seeking signatures on the discharge petition, “because I just telegraphed to you the 12 people that you needed to whip.” In response, Massie said, the official “kind of laughed, and he said, ‘Yeah.’”

But he expressed confidence that he and Khanna would secure the 218 votes to force a floor vote nonetheless.